A flail cutter is generally a shaft type cutter having a plurality of hangers welded around the outside perimeter of the shaft. A plurality of small blades are hooked onto the hangers by means of a bolt positioned through a pair of hangers, the bolt holding a ring which in turn holds a pair of blades. As the shaft is rotated and carried over the ground on a roller or skid shoes, the blades slash into the brush to be cut. A problem with the conventional prior art flail cutter is that it takes a very long time to replace these blades on the flail cutter. In the prior art, since each pair of blades is held in place by a pin or bolt, in order to change all the blades, scores of pins or bolts must be removed. This becomes very tedious as while the blades are in use, the nuts for the pins or bolts have become peened to a round shape and the pins or bolts have become bent. A socket wench does not work on these domed nuts so what would have been an arduous task becomes worsened by the time and effort spent trying to remove the damaged nuts and bolts that attach the blades to the shaft. The prior art also typically uses a V-belt drive system to power and rotate the shaft. These V-belts have a tendency to slip and/or break which causes much down time for the brush cutting machine and the operator.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,669,819 to Sawyer discloses a stalk shredder with hammers having independent lateral deflection to reduce breakage of the hammers.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,711,067 to Mott discloses a flail mower with the blades hung on C-rings.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,004,765 to Wilkes discloses beater chains that extend through holes in a cylindrical sleeve. A rod is located in the center of the sleeve.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,161,412 to Ferris discloses a spreader with flails driven by a tube that has notches that are engaged by clutch pins extending from a central shaft.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,167,318 to Ferris teaches flexible flails extending from a shaft and through a tube. The flexible flails are in the form of chains that are wound around the shaft, the chains unwinding during unloading of material.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,587,800 to Jimenez discloses a grass trimming and edging device which allows the motor to be mounted in two positions, one to present the cutting element in a substantially vertical plane and one to present the cutting element in a substantially horizontal plane.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,353,881 to Lee, et.al., discloses a twin shaft system for a lawn mower type device where each shaft rotates in opposite directions.